English

This guide serves as a starting point for locating and evaluating information for English.

Library Research Guide

Your Library Accounts

Your K-State ID card is your library card.

Search It is home to your library account

  • See items you have checked out from K-State Libraries and their due dates
  • See holds you have placed
  • See fines or fees
  • Renew items

Your K-State eID and password grant access to

Your Interlibrary Loan account manages your requests for materials from other libraries plus document delivery or shipping (for Distance Users) of items from K-State Libraries

  • Request items
  • See articles and chapters you have requested that are available for downloading
  • See list of Interlibrary Loan items you have checked out and their due dates
  • Renew items, if permitted by the lending library
    • Check the label attached to your Interlibrary Loan items for information about renewals

Search It

Search It is the search box on the Libraries home page. It is a combination of a library catalog and starting point for finding journal articles and more.

Searching in Search It

Once in Search It, either when viewing your search results list or by choosing the Advanced Search option from our home page, focus your search into four "collections":

  • K-State Libraries + articles and more (default - searches many of our databases plus books, videos, maps, journal titles, etc. owned by K-State Libraries)
  • K-State Libraries Only (our collections - books, videos, maps, journal titles, etc. Similar to a library catalog )
  • Course Reserves (class materials such as textbooks and DVDs put on reserve by faculty)
  • Research Guides (guides created to help with a particular course or discipline)

Options for searching various collections

My Account in Search It

Your Library Account in Search It

Click Sign in at the top right corner of the screen and enter your K-State eID and password.

sign in link in top right of screen area

Signing in allows you to:

  • see loan periods for K-State Libraries' physical items.
  • see a list of physical items you currently have checked out from K-State Libraries.
  • renew items you have checked out from K-State Libraries.
  • save results to your e-Shelf.
  • save search queries so you can re-run them at a later time
  • maximize the amount of content visible in your search results.

Textbooks & Reserves

Course reserves is when a professor or instructor places a textbook, DVD, or other course materials at a library help desk for students to check out. Items typically have a short check out period, like two hours, to ensure many students can access the materials.

To check what is available on Course Reserves:

In the Search It box located in the middle of our home page, push the Course Reserves button. Next, type in the department abbreviation for your class (like ENGL*), the course code (ENGL 355), or the book title, and hit Enter.

course reserves button below search form field

 

If needed, Refine My Results by choosing a link under Course Name, Course Code and Section, Course Instructors, or Academic Department. These options appear on the left side of the screen.

Course Reserves Refine My Results options

 

If you don't see what you are looking for, contact Library Help and we will double check for you.

*Not sure what the department abbreviation is? It's usually the class code on the course schedule, which you can find by logging in to KSOL/Canvas. For example: ENGL 310, HIST 586, MANGT 420.

Still not sure? Enter the full department name and look at the abbreviations under the Course Code and Section options on the left side of the sceen.

Learn more about K-State Libraries' Textbook Affordability Program.

Interlibrary Loan Overview

In the course of your research, you will discover articles, books, and other materials that are not immediately available to you because:

  • they are currently unavailable due to the Hale fire or campus closure due to COVID-19,
  • K-State Libraries do not own them, or
  • they are currently checked out.

Request these materials through interlibrary loan. Every current K-State student, faculty, and staff member has an interlibrary loan account. The first time you login to that account with your eID and password you will be prompted to provide contact information to finish setting up the account.

Essential Facts About our Interlibrary Loan Service:

  • K-State Libraries will pay for the cost of obtaining these items.
  • Typical delivery times are
    • 2-5 days for PDFs (articles, chapters, etc.)
    • 3-10 days for other material
  • PDFs are uploaded to your Interlibrary Loan account.
  • You will receive an e-mail when your item is available.
  • You can request textbooks through Interlibrary Loan, but our ability to get textbooks is dependent upon another library having a copy available to loan to us.

Interlibrary Loan Pro-Tips

  • Chapters (or anything under 50 pages) are scanned and uploaded as a pdf for you. If you know the pages, you can request a book chapter and get it faster than requesting the whole book.
  • Books are processed faster if you include the ISBN or OCLC number.
  • When in Search It, if an item is listed as "not available due to Hale fire," look for the "Not Available? Request from Interlibrary Loan" link to submit your request.

Document Delivery

Use Interlibrary Loan to request a PDF copy of an article even when the physical copy is available in K-State Libraries. We call this service Document Delivery.

Document Delivery is often used by distance students or if you do not need the article immediately. Document Delivery requests are

  • filled in 5-7 days
  • limited to 50 pages for articles and book chapters; 30 pages from microforms


Example: requesting the article Another Look at "Students' Right to Their Own Language"

Interlibrary Loan article request form

  1.  In Search It, the information in the Check for physical copy box indicates that we have the volume/issue of the journal that contains the article. Search It featuring an articles citation compared to library holdings for the journal title

    How can you tell? The article record indicates it was published in 1977 in Vol. 57. The Holdings information says we have v.49 (1969) through v.72 (1992/1993). Those years include 1977.

  2. Note that we are missing v.48 (1968), which you can tell because we have v.47 (1967) listed by itself, then pick up with the v.49-v.72 run.

  3. Click the Not Available? Request from Interlibrary Loan link above the Location information

    Search It link to Interlibrary Loan in Check for Physical Holdings tab

  4. A new screen will open and you will be prompted to login to your Interlibrary Loan account with your K-State eID and password.
  5. Once logged in, you will see a partially completed request form. Use the information from Search It (or the original database) to complete any empty required fields (indicated by a red asterisk *.)
  6. Click the Submit Request button.

You will be notified by email when your request is available and you can download it from your Interlibrary Loan account.